The telecom marketplace is being shaped by exploding data rates, near-convergence of video, data, voice, wireless and VoIP and a global demand for networks and telecom applications characterized by high availability, optimum performance and reduced capital expenditures. One of the hallmarks of this marketplace is the vast array of disruptive technologies that rapidly obsolete competing legacy technologies. In the wake of the recent telecom retrenchment after the burst of the Internet boom, telecom equipment manufacturers have responded to this new wave of disruptive technologies by adopting standardized architectures over proprietary solutions.
The AdvancedTCA (Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture, hereinafter “ATCA”) is one of the new standards gaining widespread acceptance for design and deployment of next generation of telecommunication and computer networking equipment. The core ATCA specification adopted by the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG 3.0) is a chassis, backplane, power, shelf management, clock and base interface specification targeted to the next generation of telecommunications and networking equipment. The ATCA specification covers the details of the mechanical construction, the system management, power distribution, data transport, thermal loading and power connectors to provide an open communication architecture framework for building next generation high-availability, high density systems.
The ATCA specification supports high-speed interconnections, active monitoring and control of the various modules with reliability exceeding “five-nines” (99.999%) availability. One of the features that makes it possible to achieve such a level of reliability, is a mandatory shelf management component that addresses monitoring and control of thermal load, power handling, and system health in general at a shelf level. The shelf management component is governed by extensive requirements set forth in the PICMG and Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) specifications well known in the art. The IPMI comprises a main controller called the Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) and remote controllers. The remote controllers within the same chassis are connected to the BMC via the system interface called IPMB (Intelligent Platform Management Bus/Bridge). IPMB is an enhanced implementation of I2C (hereinafter “I2C” is an acronym for Inter Integrated Circuit bus). The BMC connects to remote controllers or another BMC in another chassis via IPMC (Intelligent Platform Management Chassis) bus/bridge.
I2C (hereinafter “I2C”) is an acronym for Inter Integrated Circuit bus. I2C is a 2-wire serial interface standard defined by Philips Semiconductor to provide an easy way to connect a CPU to peripheral chips. The bus physically consists of 2 active, bi-directional wires (the serial data line and the serial clock line) and a ground connection that allows full duplexed communication between a plurality of devices. The I2C interface is a simple master/slave type interface wherein a device that controls signal transfers on the line as well as the clock frequency is designated the master and a device that is controlled by the master is designated the slave. The master can transmit or receive signals to or from a slave, respectively, or control signal transfers between two slaves, where one is the transmitter and the other is the receiver. I2C bus supports more than one master connected to one bus. In typical cases, the microcontroller acts as the master and the external peripheral devices act as the slaves.
A shelf manager is mandated by the AdvancedTCA specification and therefore, must be capable of being integrated with other modular components to construct platform-independent, telecommunication and networking equipment solutions. However, it will readily be evident to one skilled in the art that a shelf may include diverse features and functions provided by a combination of proprietary and open communication standards based devices, cards, blades or other similar components. Typically, the proprietary features and functions are provided by using dedicated hardware components/systems or software specifically tailored for the particular shelf configuration. Conventional shelf manager solutions lack the flexibility to accommodate changes in the standard of either the shelf manager or the components that are part of the shelf without extensive redesign. It would be advantageous to provide a low cost system capable of being configured for transparent porting of legacy as well as non-legacy applications. In particular, these approaches do not offer a cost advantage for MicroTCA standard compliant applications because the MicroTCA standard is geared toward smaller scale and more price sensitive applications.